Comments:
The idea for this video originated from the videos the Iron Chef sponsor, ExpertDV, always makes as an intro to Iron Chef; a short video, set to techno, displays all the video sources to be used in the contest and reveals the secret ingredient to both the audience and the competing editors. We thought it would be cool for the two competing editors themselves (ie, us) to do something similar as our own intro.

Originally, the idea was to obtain the non-secret sources from Quu ahead of time and make our own intro video. After much back and forth brainstorming, we thought it might be cool to recruit our friend EK of Big Big Truck fame to draw some original art for us for the video, ala her great "Failed Experiments in Video Editing." As part of our quest for complete public humiliation, we also decided it would be cool if we dubbed our own voices instead of using voice bubbles.

A (very) rough draft of the script was hammered out in early summer 2003, and was passed back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean via the internet for several months, before we were both satisfied and passed it on to EK to begin her drawings. Meanwhile, we set to work on our "voice acting," which turned out to become the biggest headache of the entire project. Ian struggled mightily to get his Strongbad impression down, while Hsien rewrote or scrapped entire lines so that he could "get his tongue around them", so to speak. Final compilation of the video was completed 2 days before AWA.

No irreverent parody is complete without a "celebrity cameo", so Akimbo of More Than Toast Productions makes a few guest appearances.

This was premiered at our panel at AWA 9 and also featured during the Iron Chef contest itself.

Hsien ended up winning Iron Chef (again) that year.

Notes:
-Ian created the title sequence as an homage to 70's TV shows.
-The "Ian's Despair" sequence is a Kare Kano-esque drama. The red umbrella is from Shiki-Jitsu.
-No Kevin Caldwells were harmed in the making of this video.
-The hardcore remix of "Ice Ice Baby" was indeed sung by Vanilla Ice himself, during his attempt to reinvent himself as a nu-metal star. Fargo was used as the video source.
-For those of you who haven't seen Ang Lee's film Hulk, about half of the film is a mess of gratuitous, distracting split screens, hence the odd hulk scene.
-Rocky, Evangelion, and Gunbuster parodies all wrapped up in one easy-to-swallow capsule. The Rocky sequence in particular was directly "traced" from the Steps-of-Philly scene in the original film.
-"Jiggahertz." A Flux Capacitor sitting on top of Hsien's CD rack. Huey Lewis and the News background music. 'Nuff said.
-The explosion scene was taken from Last Action Hero.
-Strongbad. Need we say more? If so, check out www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail.html, you heathen!
-The AK-47 line was taken from Quentin Tarantino's film Jackie Brown.
-The Iron Chef theme for this year was "flight." Thus, the joke about Hsien not remembering the theme while on a plane.
-Sponsored by Dokinium, the parody shorts created by Will Milberry of Aluminum Studios (www.aluminumstudios.com) and Tim Park of Doki Doki Productions (www.doki.ca).

Technical crap.

Premiere, Photoshop and Soundforge were primarily used to make this video. The voice recordings were done with cheap equipment in noisy rooms, so we apologise for any audio quality issues relating to the voiceovers.